Posted in Uncategorized on October 31, 2012|
Revelation 18:9-10 (NIV) A prelude of things to come???
“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: “‘Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!’
Long Island, New York…
Link to pictures of the flooding from Sandy (ATS forum page)
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Related posts…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 29, 2012|
They act like allies because they ARE allies…
(An 800 pound gorilla in the room should not be ignored)
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The Stone in the Synagogue’s Shoe
revisionistreview.blogspot.com
By Michael Hoffman Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Below we reprint a report detailing the pleasure the World Jewish Congress has derived from news of the dismissal of Bishop Richard Williamson from the SSPX priest’s fraternity.
Pope Benedict XVI does not dare to intervene in Talmudic affairs, such as, for example, to publicly chastize Shas “spiritual leader” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef for calling for the extermination of the Palestinians. The Vatican has surrendered to Orthodox Judaism and only maintains sufficient disagreement to bolster the facade that it represents the Church of Jesus Christ on earth.
Meanwhile, the Zionists have no compunction against shaping and influencing the Catholic Church through their power over the western media, and the chutzpah which fuels their conviction that they have the right to sanctimoniously lecture the gentiles.
As the following declaration makes clear, Bishop Fellay has done the will of the Talmudists in expelling Bishop Williamson.
True, Mr. Ronald Lauder, the billionaire scion of the Estee Lauder cosmetics firm, and Ronald Reagan’s former US Ambassador to Austria, is not yet satisfied. It seems that the SSPX has not done enough. This is consonant with the rabbinic ideology concerning the goyim — the incomplete nature of the soul of the gentile renders the actions of the gentile incomplete even when, with the best of intentions, they bow to the synagogue in abject submission.
The goyim, the pope and Bishop Fellay included, lack that special soul with which morally and racially superior Judaic persons are endowed. If you don’t believe it, observe the fate of the thousands of sub-Saharan African immigrants in the Israeli state who are bound for indefinite detention in concentration camps in the Negev, precisely due to their alleged inferiority to the Holy People. No western nation on earth could get away with such draconian barbarity without earning international opprobrium and sanctions, yet the concentration camps for Blacks in “Israel” is not an issue in America, for Obama or Romney, or the media. This is in keeping with the Talmudic dictum: one law for the “Holy People” and another for everyone else.
Bishop Fellay may speak of Bishop Williamson’s “disobedience” to Fellay, but philosophically that claim is bankrupt, since Fellay himself continues to defy the pope by refusing to submit to the jurisdiction of the local ordinaries in the dioceses where SSPX churches, schools and seminaries are located. Archbishop Lefebvre, the founder of the SSPX, taught that the salvation of souls, and not obedience to wayward authority, was the highest priority. Salvation of souls is Bishop Williamson’s mandate. How then can Fellay, who is disobedient to the pope, accuse Williamson of disobedience? The obedience issue is a smokescren which conceals a larger truth. This truth is most transparent in the German precincts of the SSPX.
Bishop Fellay is mirroring the idolatry and despotism of the German SSPX, which labors under Germany’s Muslim-like blasphemy laws, which protect the sacred relics of Holocaustianity from forensic examination, skepticism and ridicule. The means of this protection are Germany’s dungeons, where heretics such as publisher Ernst Zundel, and erstwhile Max Planck chemist Germar Rudolf, have rotted for years. Consequently, the SSPX conforms to the demands of the false religion of Holocaustianity, and does not contest the holocaustolatry of its relics, id est, the “gas chambers.” Consequently, Bishop Williamson, who blasphemed those relics, represented what Mafiosi term, “pietra di la scarpa,” the stone in the shoe. The stone had to be removed from the synagogue’s shoe.
Lauder: Williamson dismissal from Pius Brotherhood “too little too late” and not credible
24 October 2012
The head of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Ronald S. Lauder, has welcomed the expulsion of Bishop Richard Williamson from the Catholic breakaway group Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) but said it should have been done years ago and “it does nothing to restore the credibility of this organization”.
Lauder declared: “It’s good that the hatemonger and Holocaust denier Williamson has finally been sent into the wilderness, but this is a decision the SSPX leadership should have taken years ago, when the cleric openly denied the existence of gas chambers. It is too little too late. The reasons now given for Williamson’s dismissal do not mention the damage this man has caused by spreading invective against Jews and others, be it from the pulpit, via his weekly newsletter and in his statements to the media.”
In a 1989 speech at Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Sherbrooke, Canada, Williamson had claimed that “There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies”. In an interview with Swedish television conducted in Germany in late 2008, he reaffirmed his view.
The WJC president said that although not all members of the SSPX were anti-Semites like Williamson, the group had yet to deal with the issue of anti-Semitism in its ranks and part ways with those “who continue to regard the Jews as the embodiment of the anti-Christ.” Lauder thanked Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Vatican official in charge of relations with the Jews, for their unequivocal condemnation of anti-Semitic tendencies in the church. “We know where the Vatican stands on this. What we don’t know is whether the SSPX leadership agrees with it. Until the Pius Brotherhood takes a clear stand they should not be readmitted into the fold of the Catholic Church,” Ronald Lauder pointed out.
The SSPX said in a statement issued on Wednesday: “Monseigneur Richard Williamson, having distanced himself from the leadership and the government of the Saint Pius X Society over a period of several years and refusing to show respect and obedience deserved by his legitimate superiors, has been declared excluded.”
The fraternity of traditionalists who broke away from the Vatican more than two decades ago over its reforms said the decision had been reached on 4 October 2013. Williamson was one of four bishops who were consecrated by Bishop Marcel Lefebvre in Econe, Switzerland, in 1988 against the orders of Pope John Paul II, who later excommunicated them. In January 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four.
“Thank Goodness the Williamson saga will soon be behind us, once the Regensburg court has decided on his conviction for Holocaust denial,” said Lauder.
For Further Research:
Oct. 23 column on the Expulsion of Bishop Williamson
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Related posts…
And who will run this “New World Order”???
Dirty birds of a feather flock together…
Worship of the government right or wrong is the most dangerous religion…
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Psalm 83… warfare psalm sung by Carl Klang
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Psalm 83:3-8 (NLT) Forming an allied confederacy to destroy God’s genuine covenant people is nothing new… (hint… His genuine people don’t live in the sandbox over in Palestine)
… They devise crafty schemes against your people; they conspire against your precious ones. “Come,” they say, “let us wipe out Israel as a nation. We will destroy the very memory of its existence.” Yes, this was their unanimous decision. They signed a treaty as allies against you— these Edomites and Ishmaelites; Moabites and Hagrites; Gebalites, Ammonites, and Amalekites; and people from Philistia and Tyre. Assyria has joined them, too, and is allied with the descendants of Lot…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 28, 2012|
Because people will sacrifice anything, even their liberty and their children’s future, to the idol they think will save them from their fears… and they always obey the god they fear the most… —Editor
Hebrews 2:14-15 (NIV)
… Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death…
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Matthew 4:10 (ESV)
… Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”
Will the Apocalypse arrive online?
By Karen J Greenberg Oct 23, 2012
First the financial system collapses and it’s impossible to access one’s money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning. Within days, society has begun to break down. In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food. The country finds itself fractured and fragmented – hardly recognizable.
It may sound like a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie or the first episode of the National Broadcasting Co’s popular new show Revolution, but it could be your life – a nationwide cyber-version of Ground Zero.
Think of it as September 11, 2015. It’s US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s vision of the future – and if he’s right (or maybe even if he isn’t), you had better wonder what the future holds for erstwhile American civil liberties, privacy, and constitutional protections.
Last week, Panetta addressed the Business Executives for National Security, an organization devoted to creating a robust public-private partnership in matters of national security. Standing inside the Intrepid, New York’s retired aircraft-carrier-cum-military-museum, he offered a hair-raising warning about an imminent and devastating cyber-strike at the sinews of American life and well-being.
Yes, he did use that old alarm bell of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor”, but for anyone interested in US civil liberties and rights, his truly chilling image was far more immediate. “A cyber-attack perpetrated by nation-states or violent extremist groups,” he predicted, could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
Panetta is not the first official in the administration of US President Barack Obama to warn that the nation could be facing a cyber-catastrophe, but he is the highest-ranking to resort to September 11 imagery in doing so. Going out on a limb that previous cyber doomsayers had avoided, he mentioned September 11 four times in his speech, referring to America’s current vulnerabilities in cyberspace as “a pre-9/11 moment”.
Apocalypse soon
Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, warnings of cyber-menaces from foreign enemies and others have flooded the news. Politicians have chimed in, as have the experts – from respected security professionals like former president George W Bush’s chief counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke to security policymakers on Capitola Hill like Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins.
Even America’s no-drama president has weighed in remarkably dramatically on the severity of the threat. “Taking down vital banking systems could trigger a financial crisis,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “The lack of clean water or functioning hospitals could spark a public health emergency. And as we’ve seen in past blackouts, the loss of electricity can bring businesses, cities, and entire regions to a standstill.”
Panetta’s invocation of September 11 was, however, clearly meant to raise the stakes, to sound a wake-up call to the business community, the US Congress, and the nation’s citizens. The predictions are indeed frightening. According to the best experts, the consequences of a massive, successful cyberattack on crucial US systems could be devastating to life as we know it.
It’s no longer just a matter of intellectual-property theft, but of upending the life we lead. Imagine this: Instead of terrorists launching planes at two symbolic buildings in the world’s financial center, cyber-criminals, terrorists, or foreign states could launch viruses into major financial networks via the Internet, or target America’s power grids, robbing citizens of electricity (and thus heat in the middle of winter), or disrupt the systems that run public transportation, or contaminate the water supply.
Any or all of these potential attacks, according to leading cyber-experts, are possible. Though they would be complex and difficult operations, demanding technical savvy, they are nonetheless within the realm of present possibility. Without protections, US citizens could be killed outright (say on a plane or a train) or left, as Obama warned, without food, fuel, water and the mechanisms for transacting daily business.
For those of us who have lived inside the national-security conversation for more than a decade now, such early warnings of dire consequences might sound tediously familiar. After all, in the wake of the actual September 11 attacks, governmental overreach became commonplace, based on fear-filled scenarios of future doom.
Continual hysteria over a domestic terror threat and al-Qaeda “sleeper cells” bent on chaos led to the curtailing of the civil liberties of large segments of the US Muslim population and, more generally, far greater surveillance of Americans. That experience should indeed make us suspicious of doomsday predictions and distrustful of claims that extraordinary measures are necessary to protect “national security”.
For the moment, though, let’s pretend that we haven’t been through a decade in which national-security needs were used and sometimes overblown to trump constitutional protections. Instead, let’s take the recent cyber-claims at face value and assume that Richard Clarke, who before September 11, 2001, warned continuously of an impending attack by al-Qaeda, is correct again.
And while we’re not dismissing these apocalyptic warnings, let’s give a little before-the-fact thought not just to the protection of America’s resources, information systems and infrastructure, but to what’s likely to happen to rights, liberties and the rule of law once we’re swept away by cyber-fears. If you imagined that good old-fashioned rights and liberties were made obsolete by the Bush administration’s “global war on terror”, any thought experiment you perform on what a response to cyberwar might entail is far worse.
Remember former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales telling us that when it came to the interrogation of suspected terrorists, the protections of the US constitution were “quaint and obsolete”? Remember the argument, articulated by many, that torture, Guantanamo and warrantless wiretapping were all necessary to prevent another September 11, whatever they did to Americans’ liberties and laws?
Now, fast-forward to the new cyber-era, which, we are already being told, is at least akin to the threat of September 11 (and possibly far worse). And keep in mind that if the fears rise high enough, many of the sorts of moves against rights and constitutional restraints that came into play only after September 2001 might not need an actual cyber-disaster. Just the fear of one might do the trick.
Not surprisingly, the language of cyber-defense, as articulated by Panetta and others, borrows from the recent lexicon of counterterrorism. In Panetta’s words, “Just as the Pentagon developed the world’s finest counterterrorism force over the past decade, we need to build and maintain the finest cyber-operators.”
The cyber threat to US rights and liberties
Cyber is “a new terrain for warfare”, Panetta tells us, a “battlefield of the future”. So perhaps it’s time to ask two questions: In a world of cyber-fear, what has the “war on terror” taught us about protecting ourselves from the excesses of government? What do policymakers, citizens and civil libertarians need to think about when it comes to rights that would potentially be threatened in the wake of, or even in anticipation of, a cyberattack?
Here, then, are several potential threats to constitutional liberties, democratic decision-making processes, and the rule of law to watch out for in this new cyberwar era.
The threat to privacy
In the “war on terror”, the US government – thanks to the Patriot Act and the warrantless surveillance program, among other efforts – expanded its ability to collect information on individuals suspected of terrorism. It became a net that could snag all sorts of Americans in all sorts of ways. In cyberspace, of course, the potential for collecting, sharing and archiving data on individuals, often without a warrant, increases exponentially, especially when potential attacks may target information itself.
A recent probe by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation illustrates the point. The Coreflood Botnet utilized viruses to steal personal and financial information from millions of Internet users, including hospitals, banks, universities and police stations. The focus of the Coreflood threat – which also means its interface with the government – was private information. The FBI got warrants to seize the command-and-control servers that acted as an intermediary for the stolen information.
At that point, the government was potentially in possession of vast amounts of private information on individual US citizens. The FBI then offered assurances that it would not access or make use of any of the personal information held on those servers.
But in an age that has become increasingly tolerant of – or perhaps resigned to – the government’s pursuit of information in violation of privacy rights, the prospects for future cyber-security policy are worrisome. After all, much of the information that might be at risk in so many potential cyberattacks – let’s say on banks – would fall into the private sphere. Yet the government, citing national security, could persuade companies to turn over that those data, store them, and use them in various ways, all the while claiming that its acts are “preventive” in nature and so not open to debate or challenge. And as in so many post-September 11 cases, the courts might back such claims up.
Once the information has been shared within the government, who’s to say how long it will be held and how it will be used in the future? Or what agency guidelines exist, if any, to ensure that it won’t be warehoused for future uses of quite a different sort? As former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff put it, “You need to have a certain amount of accountability so government doesn’t run roughshod [over people’s right to privacy], and that’s been a hard thing to architect.”
Enemy creep
If you think it has been difficult to distinguish enemies reliably from the rest of us in the “war on terror”, try figuring it out in cyberspace. Sorting out just who launched an attack and in whose name can be excruciatingly difficult. Even if, for example, you locate the server that introduced the virus, how do you determine on whose behalf such an attack was launched? Was it a state or non-state actor? Was it a proxy or an original attack?
The crisis of how to determine the enemy in virtual space opens up a host of disturbing possibilities, not just for mistakes, but for convenient blaming. After all, George W Bush’s top officials went to war in Iraq labeling Saddam Hussein an ally of al-Qaeda, even when they knew it wasn’t true. Who is to say that a US president won’t use the very difficulty of naming an online enemy as an excuse to blame a more convenient target?
War or crime?
And what if that enemy is domestic rather than international? Will its followers be deemed “enemy combatants” or “lawbreakers”? If this doesn’t already sound chillingly familiar to you, it should. It was an early theme of the “war on terror” where, beginning with its very name, “war” won out over crime.
Cyberattacks will raise similar questions, but the stakes will be even higher. Is a hacker attempting to steal money working on his own or for a terrorist group, or is he in essence a front for an enemy state eager to take down the US? As Kelly Jackson Higgins, senior editor at the information security blog Dark Reading, reminds us, “Hackers posing as other hackers can basically encourage conflict among other nations or organizations, experts say, and sit back and watch.”
Expanding presidential fiat
National-security professionals like Defense Secretary Panetta are already encouraging another cyber-development that will mimic the “war on terror”. Crucial decisions, they argue, should be the president’s alone, leaving Congress and the American people out in the cold. President Bush, of course, reserved the right to determine who was an enemy combatant. President Obama has reserved the right to choose individuals for drone assassination on his own.
Now, an ever less checked-and-balanced executive is going to be given war powers in cyberspace. In fact, we know that this is already the case, that the last two US administrations have launched the first state cyberwar in history – against Iran and its nuclear program. Going forward, the White House is likely to be left with the power of deciding who is a cyberattacker, and when and how such enemies should be attacked.
In Panetta’s words, “If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant, physical destruction in the United States or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action against those who would attack us to defend this nation when directed by the president.”
Given the complex and secretive world of cyberattacks and cyberwar, who is going to cry foul when the president alone makes such a decision? Who will even know?
Secrecy creep
While government officials are out in full force warning of the incipient cyber-threat to our way of life, it’s becoming ever clearer that the relationship between classified information, covert activities, and what the public can know is being further challenged by the new cyber-world. In the “war on terror” years, a cult of government secrecy has spread, while Obama administration attacks on government leakers have reached new heights. On the other hand, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks made the ability to access previously classified information a household premise.
So the attempt to create an aura of secrecy around governmental acts is on the rise and yet government secrets seem ever more at risk. For example, the US intended to keep the Stuxnet virus, launched anonymously against Iranian nuclear facilities, a secret. Not only did the attacks themselves become public knowledge, but eventually the US-Israeli ownership of the attack leaked out as well. The old adage “the truth will out” certainly seems alive today, and yet the governmental urge for secrecy still remains ascendant.
The question is: Will there be a heightened call – however futile – for increased secrecy and the ever more draconian punishment of leakers, as has been the case in the “war on terror”? Will the strong arm of government threaten, in an ever more draconian manner, the media, leakers, and those demanding transparency in the name of exposing lawless policies – as has happened with Central Intelligence Agency leaker John Kiriakou, New York Times reporter James Risen, and others?
Facing the cyber-age
When it comes to issues like access to information and civil-liberties protections, it could very well be that the era of Big Brother is almost upon us, whether we like it or not, and that fighting against it is obsolete behavior. On the other hand, perhaps we’re heading into a future in which the government will have to accept that it cannot keep secrets as it once did. Whatever the case, most of us face enormous unknowns when it comes to how the cyber-world, cyber-dangers, and also heightened cyber-fears will affect both America’s security and Americans’ liberties.
On the eve of the US presidential election, it is noteworthy that neither candidate has had the urge to discuss cyber-security lately. And yet the US has launched a cyberwar and has seemingly recently experienced the first case of cyber-blowback. The websites of several of the major banks were attacked last month, presumably by Iran, interrupting online access to accounts.
With so little reliable information in the public sphere and so many potential pitfalls, both Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney seem to have decided that it’s just not worth their while to raise the issue. In this, they have followed Congress’ example. The failure to pass regulatory legislation this year on the subject revealed a bipartisan unwillingness of US representatives to expose themselves to political risk when it comes to cyber-legislation.
Whether officials and policymakers are willing to make the tough decisions or not, cyber-vulnerabilities are more of a reality than was the threat of sleeper cells after September 11, 2001. It may be a stretch to go from cynicism and distrust in the face of color-coded threat levels to the prospect of cyberwar, but it’s one that needs to be taken.
Given what we know about fear and the destructive reactions it can produce, it would be wise to jump-start the protections of law, personal liberties and governmental accountability. Whoever the next US president may be, the cyber-age is upon us, carrying with it a new threat to liberty in the name of security. It’s time now – before either an actual attack or a legitimate fear of such an attack – to protect what’s so precious in American life, its liberties.
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“They” have a theme song… “Evil, Filthy, Rotten Conspiracy” by Carl Klang…
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Psalm 34:4 (NIV) Either trust in Him or don’t, the choice is yours…
… I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears…
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Revelation 12:11 (NIV) There will be no cowards in the Lamb’s kingdom…
… They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death…
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II Peter 3:10-14 (ESV) Being “at peace” does not mean quivering in fear…
… But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 27, 2012|
Christian Support for Romney Makes a Mockery of Christ
revisionistreview.blogspot.com
Posted by Michael Hoffman at 10/25/2012 10:03:00 AM
Michael Hoffman’s Introduction: Robert Parry’s essay (below) offers good insight into the degree to which Willard “Mitt” Romney is a creature of the blood-drenched, neo-con butchers who brought us the disastrous Iraq and Afghan wars. Foreign wars lead to trillion dollar US deficits and nation-building overseas, while US infrastructure crumbles. If he is elected, Romney will very likely invade Iran, creating a worldwide economic depression and gas prices at $6 or $7 a gallon in the US, while killing hundreds or thousands of American soldiers, sailors and Marines and tens of thousands of Iranian civilians (including pregnant Iranian women — are you paying attention, anti-abortion activists?). The slaughter of innocent men, women and children in needless foreign wars fought to make the world safe for Zionist oppression of indigenous people, is just as evil as homosexual marriage and abortion. War is a form of infanticide, since countless children, born and unborn, die as a result of it.
In addition to his allegiance to the neo-con butchers, Mr. Romney is the agent of predatory capitalism. He will strip every protection and every safety net from American workers that he can get away with. The poorest and most vulnerable in our society will suffer as a result, and abortions will increase. His vice-presidential running mate is an open advocate of the greed-is-good atheist economist Ayn Rand, for whom selfishness and the mortal sin of usury were high virtues.
Neither Obama nor Romney represent any kind of candidate that Christians can support, but Romney will indeed get the so-called “Christian” vote on November 6 thanks to the blindness of priests and ministers, from traditional Catholics to Billy Graham, who are helping to fulfill the Mormon ambition of putting a spiritual descendant of Joseph Smith into the White House. What is called Christianity today is a mockery of the holy name of Christ.
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“Moderate Mitt” — Neocon Trojan Horse
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
24 October 2012
Mitt Romney’s peculiar sense of geography – thinking Iran was some landlocked country that needed Syria as a “route to the sea” – may have raised some eyebrows over Romney’s lack of basic knowledge, but another part of the same answer, referring to the civil war in Syria as “an opportunity,” should have raised more alarm.
Though Romney’s goal in Monday’s foreign policy debate was to downplay his warlike neoconservative stand, his reference to the Syrian chaos as “an opportunity” suggests that his more moderate rhetoric is just another ploy to deceive voters and win the election, not a real abandonment of neocon strategies.
In that sense, the new “moderate Mitt” is less a sign of a neocon retreat from his earlier bellicosity than a Trojan Horse to be wheeled onto the White House grounds on Jan. 20, 2013, so the neocons can pour forth from its hollowed-out belly and regain full control of U.S. foreign policy.
The neocons don’t really mind that Romney has suddenly abandoned many of their cherished positions, such as extending the Afghan War beyond 2014 and returning U.S. troops to Iraq. The neocons understand the political need for Romney to calm independent voters who fear that he may be another George W. Bush.
In Monday’s debate, Romney said, “Syria’s an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea. It’s the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel. And so seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us. Number two, seeing a — a replacement government being responsible people is critical for us.”
The “route to the sea” comment – with its faint echo of a distant time in geopolitics – represented proof that Romney lacks even a rudimentary knowledge of world geography, since much of Iran’s southern territory fronts on the Persian Gulf and Iran could only reach Syria by transiting Iraq. Syria and Iran have no common border.
But more significantly, Romney was revealing the crucial connection between the neocon desire for “regime change” in Syria and the neocon determination to strangle Israel’s close-in enemies, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Romney’s demand for a new Syrian government of “responsible people” further suggests that the Republican presidential nominee shares the core neocon fantasy that the United States can simply remove one unsavory Middle East dictator and install a pro-Western, Israel-friendly leader who will then shut off aid to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
That was the central fallacy in the Iraq War, the notion that United States with its unparalleled military might could shift the Mideast’s political dynamics to Israel’s advantage through coercive “regime change.” In Iraq, the U.S. military eliminated Saddam Hussein but then saw a new Iraqi government ally itself with Iran.
The new Iraq may be less of a military threat, but it has not reached out and embraced Israel as some neocons had hoped. Indeed, by removing Hussein’s Sunni-controlled regime – and ending up with a Shiite-dominated one – Bush’s Iraq War essentially eliminated a major bulwark against the regional influence of Iran’s Shiite regime.
Yet, despite the bloody and costly catastrophe in Iraq, the heart of the neocon dream is still beating – and Romney’s comment indicates that he shares its illusions. Dating back at least to the mid-1990s, the neocon idea has been to use violent or coercive “regime change” in Muslim countries to secure Israel’s security.
The neocons’ first target may have been Iraq, but that was never the endgame. The strategy was to make Iraq into a military base for overthrowing the governments of Iran and Syria. Back in the heady days of 2002-2003, a neocon joke posed the question of what to do after ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq – whether to next go east to Iran or west to Syria. The punch-line was: “Real men go to Tehran.”
According to the neocon grand plan, once pro-Israeli governments were established in Iran, Iraq and Syria, Israel’s hostile neighbors, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, would lose their benefactors and shrivel up, without money or weapons. Then, Israel could dictate its terms for “peace” and “security.”
This neocon strategy emerged after the lopsided U.S. victory in Kuwait, in which President George H.W. Bush demonstrated the leaps-and-bounds advantage of the high-tech U.S. military over the Iraqi army whose soldiers were literally blown to bits by U.S. missiles and “smart bombs” while American casualties were kept to a minimum.
After that 1991 victory, it became conventional wisdom in Washington that no army on earth could withstand the sophisticated killing power of the U.S. military. That belief – combined with frustration over Israel’s stalemated conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah – led American neocons to begin thinking about a new approach, “regime change” across the Middle East.
The early outlines of this aggressive concept for remaking the Middle East emerged in 1996 when a group of neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israel’s Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his campaign for prime minister.
The neocon strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Under the “clean break,” Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein who were supportive of Israel’s close-in enemies.
The plan called Hussein’s ouster “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of “regime change.”
But what the “clean break” needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel’s highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel’s economy from such overreach would have been staggering.
In 1998, the U.S. neocon brain trust pushed the “clean break” plan another step forward with the creation of the Project for the New American Century, which urged President Bill Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
However, Clinton would only go so far, maintaining a harsh embargo on Iraq and enforcing a “no-fly zone” which involved U.S. aircraft conducting periodic bombing raids. Still, with Clinton or his heir apparent, Al Gore, in the White House, a full-scale invasion of Iraq appeared out of the question.
The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 (Editor’s note: The US government attacked the World Trade Center), leaving behind a political climate across America for war and revenge.
Of course, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had other motives besides Israeli security – from Bush’s personal animus toward Saddam Hussein to controlling Iraq’s oil resources – but a principal goal of the neocons was the projection of American power deep into the Muslim world, to strike at enemy states beyond Israel’s military reach.
In those days of imperial hubris, the capabilities of the U.S. military were viewed as strategic game-changers. However, the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. conquest, relying on low-tech weapons such as “improvised explosive devices,” dashed the neocon dream – at least in the short run. The “real men” had to postpone their trips to Tehran and Damascus.
But the dream hasn’t died. It just had to wait out four years of Barack Obama. In Campaign 2012, the neocons have returned to surround Mitt Romney, who like George W. Bush a decade ago has only a vague understanding of the world and is more than happy to cede the direction of U.S. foreign policy to the smart, confident and well-connected neocons.
The neocons also understand the need to manipulate the American people. In the 1980s, when I was reporting Ronald Reagan’s Central American policies, I dealt with the neocons often and came to view them as expert manipulators whose view of democracy was that it was okay to trick the common folk into doing what was deemed necessary. The neocons learned to exaggerate dangers and exploit fears. They tested their skills out in Central America with warnings about how peasant rebellions against corrupt oligarchs were part of some grand Soviet scheme to conquer the United States through the soft underbelly of Texas.
When the neocons returned to power under George W. Bush, they applied the same techniques in hyping the threat from Iraq. They pushed baseless claims about Saddam Hussein sharing non-existent weapons of mass destruction with al-Qaeda, all the better to scare the American people.
The neocons faced some painful reversals when the Iraq War foundered from late 2003 through 2006, but they salvaged some status in 2007 by pushing the fiction of the “successful surge,” which supposedly turned impending defeat into victory, although the truth was that the “surge” only delayed the inevitable failure of the U.S. enterprise.
After Bush’s departure in 2009 and the arrival of Obama, the neocons retreated, too, to Washington think tanks and the editorial pages of national news outlets. However, they continued to influence the perception of events in the Middle East, shifting the blame for the Iraq defeat – as much as possible – onto Obama.
New developments in the region also created what the neocons viewed as new openings. For instance, the Arab Spring of 2011 led to civil unrest in Syria where the Assad dynasty – based in non-Sunni religious sects – was challenged by a Sunni-led insurgency which included some democratic reformers as well as some radical jihadists.
Meanwhile, in Iran, international resistance to its nuclear program prompted harsh economic sanctions which have undermined the Islamic rule of the Shiite mullahs. Though President Obama views the sanctions as leverage to compel Iran to accept limits on its nuclear program, some neocons are already salivating over how to hijack the sanctions on behalf of “regime change.”
At this pivotal moment, what the neocons need desperately is to maneuver their way back into the White House behind Mitt Romney’s election. And, if that requires Romney to suddenly soften his hard-line neocon rhetoric for the next two weeks, that is a small price to pay.
Which brings us back to Monday’s foreign policy debate in which Romney abandoned what had been his supposedly principled stands, such as denouncing Obama’s schedule to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Though Romney had called that a major mistake – telling the Taliban when the Americans were departing – he embraced the same timetable. The voters could breathe a sigh of relief over “Moderate Mitt.”
However, in Romney’s comment about Syria, he showed his real intent, the neocon desire to exploit the conflict in Syria to replace Bashar al-Assad with a new leader who would accommodate Israel and shut down assistance going to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It was in that context that Romney termed the Syrian violence, which has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives, an “opportunity.”
But the real opportunity for the neocons would come if the American voters, satisfied that Romney no longer appears to be the crazy war hawk of the Republican primaries, elect him on Nov. 6 and then celebrate his arrival next Jan. 20 by pushing a crude wooden horse through the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
A pdf file of this column is online in leaflet format to print and distribute:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bwg8nmLrvOTjTFdIWi1vLTBVUmM
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Related posts…
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Romans 11:8 (NIV) Stupor and stupid have very similar meanings and very similar adherents…
… as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.”
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I Corinthians 15:34 (NLT)
Think carefully about what is right, and stop sinning. For to your shame I say that some of you don’t know God at all…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2012|
From the script of the movie “Braveheart”
PRINCESS…
Let us talk plainly. You invade England. But you cannot complete the conquest, so far from your shelter and supply. The King proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you title, estates, and this chest with a thousand pounds of gold, which I am to pay to you personally.
WALLACE…
A Lordship. And gold. That I should become Judas.
PRINCESS…
Peace is made is such ways.
WALLACE…
SLAVES ARE MADE IN SUCH WAYS!!!
More People Eschew Jobless Benefits Than Scam System
The Wall Street Journal
By Kristina Peterson Wed, Oct 24, 2012 4:55 PM EDT
Some people scam the system to get jobless benefits they don’t deserve. But far more don’t claim the benefits for which they are eligible, according to research by economists working with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
In 2009, for example, the federal and state governments paid almost $121 billion in unemployment insurance, including $11 billion in overpayments.
If everyone eligible for jobless benefits that year had claimed them, the program would’ve had to shell out an additional $108 billion, according to an article by Concordia University economist David Fuller, St. Louis Fed economist B. Ravikumar and Texas A&M University economics professor Yuzhe Zhang. Their research was posted in the St. Louis Fed’s Regional Economist, a quarterly publication.
“On average, the unclaimed benefits are much larger than the more frequently discussed overpayments,” the authors note.
Overpayments are tracked by the Labor Department‘s Benefit Accuracy Measurement program, which uses investigators to audit random samples of weekly unemployment insurance claims and interview the people receiving them.
The authors calculated the amount of unclaimed benefits by using the Labor Department’s Current Population Survey data to determine the number of unemployed people in each state, as well as each state’s requirements to get jobless benefits. They then multiplied the total number of eligible unemployed people by the average amount of jobless benefits per person.
There are a variety of reasons why people might not claim their benefits, including anxiety over state investigations into how they lost their jobs or changes in the application process that pose hurdles, said Claire McKenna, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project. Florida, for example, now requires the unemployed to apply for benefits online and complete a 45-question “individual skills review,” which can intimidate some people, she said.
Critics of the nation’s unemployment insurance program, created in 1935, have often worried about incidents of fraud in the system. Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have argued that jobless benefits may undermine unemployed people’s motivation to look for new jobs.
But most of the overpaid benefits didn’t result from acts of fraud, which must be committed deliberately. Sometimes the wrong formula is simply used when crunching the numbers, resulting in someone getting paid too much in benefits. Cases of fraud made up about a quarter of the total overpayments between 2007 and 2011, according to the article.
And overpayments made to unemployed people who didn’t meet the requirements for seeking a new job–by filing a minimum number of job applications each week, for example–now represent less than 5% of fraud. (During this period, the average overpayment was 11% and in cases of fraud was most commonly sent to someone who had returned to work.)
Looking at a longer period, from 1989 to 2011, overpayments made up less than one-tenth of all the jobless benefits paid, and those linked to fraud comprised less than 3% of all benefits. By contrast, unclaimed benefits amounted to nearly seven times the overpayments, according to the research.
That means the program could have been a lot more expensive. Even so, the cost of jobless benefits came under scrutiny at the end of 2011, when Congress struggled to find a way to pay for extended federal jobless benefits and a cut in workers’ payroll taxes.
States typically pay for the first 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, largely through a tax on employers. Some states, often with federal assistance, have been paying for extra weeks to cope with high unemployment. The federal government, which pays to administer the programs, stepped in during the recession to support additional benefits, which at one point were capped at 99 weeks total, but have since been lowered.
Unemployment insurance is available for workers who weren’t at fault for losing their job. Those who quit or who are new to the work force don’t qualify, and benefits are based on a worker’s prior wages. They must reapply weekly or biweekly, depending on the state, and indicate that they are looking for work.
–Sara Murray contributed to this article.
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How to become a slave… go to the government for help…
No one takes anything the government says at face value…
Government funded lying to be made legal…
The people’s attitude when the government is nothing more than a parasite…
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Proverbs 1:17 (NASB)
Indeed, it is useless to spread the baited net In the sight of any bird…
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Proverbs 22:3 (NLT)
A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 25, 2012|
Colossians 3:5-6 (ISV) The wrath of God IS coming…
So put to death your worldly impulses: sexual sin, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). It is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient…
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Luke 12:5 (NIV)
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him…
Christian Group Banned for Adhering to ‘Biblical Truths of Christianity’
Christian Members Refused to Make Lesbian Woman Group Leader
By Myles Collier , Christian Post Contributor
October 23, 2012|3:57 pm
A longstanding Christian organization at a university in Massachusetts has been banned from the school. School officials claim some of the organizations requirements violate the school’s non-discriminatory policy by having members adhere to “biblical truths of Christianity.”
Tufts University in Medford, Mass. banned Tufts Christian Fellowship after the university’s student-led Community Union Judiciary deemed the requirement listed in the organizations constitution violated the university’s non-discrimination policies.
The complaint was first logged by a student who claimed that she was denied a leadership role within the organization due to the fact that she was a lesbian.
The final decision came as leaders with the Christian group refused to revise their governing document Oct. 18. That action, first suggested in the first week of October, would have been supported by the Tufts Community Union Constitution’s non-discriminatory clause, Judiciary Chair Adam Sax told Tuffs Daily.
Officials within the Judiciary had previously stated that should Tufts Christian Fellowship revise their constitution or remove leadership requirements that were deemed to be discriminatory by Oct. 18, they would accepted by the university.
The group’s Vision and Planning team felt that they could not, in good faith, remove or revise those specific leadership requirements and abandon their Christian standards. Their refusal led to the Judiciary’s final decision.
The Judiciary ruled that the organization’s constitution prevented students from applying to leadership positions based on their beliefs. The disputed clause states that any TCF member who wants to apply for a leadership position must live by a series of tenets called a Basis of Faith, which had been described as the “basic Biblical truths of Christianity.”
The decision means that the group will lose all rights and privileges to use the Tufts name in its title or any of their activities or events. It also will prevent the organization from reserving space through the school’s Office of Campus Life.
Tufts Christian Fellowship will also be barred from receiving funds that are collected from students and used only for student groups.
Leaders from the Christian group have declared they will appeal the Judiciary’s decision. They contend that as a Christian organization, they are allowed to put in place guidelines that would be concurrent with the stated mission of the organization.
“We’re deciding to appeal this decision because we feel like just the purpose of our organization is to … encourage understanding and celebration of each belief … the best way to fulfill that purpose is to have leaders that are centered on and unified by these beliefs,” a member of the group who wished to remain anonymous told Tufts Daily.
“We feel like we have the right to be selective on the basis of belief for our leaders since we’re a student group that is trying to encourage understanding about a faith-based set of beliefs,” the unnamed student added.
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Related posts…
No we can’t all just get along…
We are not supposed to get along…
Those too stupid to know Who their God is will be slaves…
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Luke 24:25 (NLT) Those Jesus calls fools…
Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures…
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James 4:4 (NIV)
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God…
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Luke 23:40 (NLT)
But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die?
Posted in Uncategorized on October 24, 2012|
And every choice on the menu suits the shadow government just fine…
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II Corinthians 2:11 (NLT)
… so that satan will not outsmart us. For we are familiar with his evil schemes…
Or are we???
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romney exposed
Published on Oct 15, 2012 by John Hankey (youtube)
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The dialectic method of forcing change…
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Not a dime’s worth of difference…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 22, 2012|
Isaiah 2:20 (GWT) Ungodly government is a backstabbing god at best…
On that day people will throw to the moles and the bats the silver and gold idols that they made for themselves to worship…
Army at war over axing of battalions
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent 10:00PM BST 02 Jul 2012
Ministry of Defence plans to scrap historic battalions are unfair on troops, undermine the Army and could threaten future operations, the commander of one of Britain’s most decorated regiments has warned…
Brig David Paterson says in a letter to Gen Sir Peter Wall, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), seen by The Daily Telegraph, that the proposed abolition of 2nd Bn Royal Regiment of Fusiliers will not stand up to public scrutiny.
The move will be announced on Thursday as part of a substantial cull of the Army. At least five infantry battalions and a third of the Royal Artillery and Royal Logistic Corps will be cut as the Army loses 12,000 personnel, in addition to the 7,000 recently sacked, and shrinks by a fifth to 82,000 men.
It will almost halve the number of infantry serving in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers from about 1,100 soldiers to 600. Members of the axed battalion face redundancy or a move to other units. Brig Paterson – the honorary Colonel of the Regiment of Fusiliers – says the decision will not “best serve” the Armed Forces and “cannot be presented as the best or most sensible military option”.
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Disclosure of the document comes after a number of disillusioned senior officers have left in recent months.
In the letter, Brig Paterson tells Gen Sir Peter that he is “bitterly disappointed” at the decision to cut a battalion that is “the strongest in raw manning and deployable strength”. Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has previously suggested that regiments having difficulty recruiting would be most vulnerable. But figures show 2 RRF has 523 trained men out of a maximum strength of 532.
Brig Paterson adds: “I, as Colonel, have the duty to tell my men why it is their battalion, which at the time of the announcement will be the best manned battalion in the Army, with recruits waiting in the wings, was chosen by CGS. I will then also have to explain to my Fusiliers in a fully manned battalion why they are likely to be posted to battalions that cannot recruit. This will not be an easy sell.”
The Fusiliers can boast 20 Victoria Crosses, including six awarded “before breakfast” at Gallipoli in 1915. In the First World War, they contributed more battalions than any other regiment and they have fought with distinction in nearly every conflict since the Second World War, including Iraq in 1991 and 2003.
But the regiment will “wither on the vine” Brig Paterson warns, if it shrinks to a single battalion.
In his letter, written last month, he adds: “I would not want you to have even the slightest impression that I am challenging your orders.” But he concludes: “If challenged or scrutinised by, for example the media, it cannot be presented as the best or most sensible military option.”
The letter criticises the decision not to create a “super regiment” comprising two battalions each of Fusiliers, Royal Anglians and Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, allowing greater opportunities for promotion and adequate numbers for missions.
Brig Paterson warns that operations could be undermined, as reducing the Fusiliers to one battalion “fails to meet the criteria of sustainability and operational capability” set out under the MoD’s plans.
There are also suspicions – not outlined in the letter – that English regiments will be sacrificed in favour of Scottish units as the independence referendum looms.
Brig Paterson, who is also chief of training for the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, says that his soldiers and the MPs who represent them will “undoubtedly want to see the detailed data and reasoning” behind the cut. Regiments will have just 24 hours’ notice before Thursday’s announcement, the letter discloses. “This is not long enough for my commanding officers to brief their men and cannot be right,” it says.
Members of 2 RRF will almost certainly be on the front line in Afghanistan when disbandment takes effect, expected to be within a year. The unit deploys to Cyprus later this summer to act as the Theatre Reserve Battalion for two years.
“They must not be expected to disband from Cyprus with all the inherent difficulties of schooling for children, housing and other welfare issues,” the letter says.
An MoD spokesman said yesterday: “We don’t comment on leaked documents. The CGS has held a number of discussions about the restructuring of the Army with senior officers.
“We have always been clear that more than one set of criteria is used in determining the future shape of the Army as it is restructured to become an integrated regular and reserve force by 2020.”
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Federal pensions now quietly being cut…
Plan to cut military pensions…
Plans to keep you from getting your money???
Worship of the government right or wrong is the most dangerous religion…
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Zephaniah 2:9-11 (NASB)
… The remnant of My people will plunder them and the remainder of My nation will inherit them.” This they will have in return for their pride, because they have taunted and become arrogant against the people of the LORD of hosts. The LORD will be terrifying to them, for He will starve all the gods of the earth; and all the coastlands of the nations will bow down to Him, everyone from his own place…
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Psalm 2:12 (NIV)
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 20, 2012|
From “Democracy In America”, chapter 21 “Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare” by Alexis De Tocqueville…
It is believed by some that modern society will be always changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.
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Matthew 23:23 (ESV) Top priorities are not their priority…
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
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Matthew 23:13 (NLT)
“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either…
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Related posts…
Selfish people are easy to enslave…
Posted in Uncategorized on October 19, 2012|
Communist thought in the days of the Weather Underground…
Larry Grathwohl on Ayers’ plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions…
Uploaded by 50MMike on Oct 29, 2008 (youtube)
Psalm 37:32 (NASB)
The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him…
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Luke 22:2 (NLT)
The leading priests and teachers of religious law were plotting how to kill Jesus, but they were afraid of the people’s reaction…
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John 10:10 (NASB) “The Thief” goes by many names, communist, fascist, nazi, socialist, progressive, venture capitalist… all paid for by “The Banker”
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly…
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The most efficient thieves in the world…
Dirty birds of a feather flock together…
Neither “liberal”, “conservative”, or “progressive” understand “rule by Law”…
The truth sometimes hurts… especially if you are a government worshiping idolater…
News for those with Eyes to See and Ears to Hear 